‘Sarah’ wraps youth theater season

TOM TITUS

The Laguna Playhouse winds up its 2004-05 Youth Theater season

starting this weekend with a highly honored story that also will mark

the end of a 17-year road for the playhouse’s retiring Youth Theater

director.

“Sarah, Plain and Tall,” Patricia MacLachlan’s winner of the

Newberry Medal and over 30 other book awards -- adapted for the stage

by Joseph Robinette -- opens a two-weekend engagement tonight as the

parting shot for its director, Joe Lauderdale.

The play -- which was filmed as a television movie with Glenn

Close in the title role -- tells of a 19th century widowed Kansas

farmer with two children who advertises for a wife. Sarah Wheaton of

Maine responds, “I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I

am plain and tall.”

When she arrives, her homesickness for Maine and the ocean

concerns the youngsters, and when she goes off to town alone, young

Caleb -- whose mother died during childbirth -- is stricken with the

fear that she has gone for good. But she returns with colored pencils

to illustrate for them the beauty of Maine and to explain that,

though she misses her home, “the truth of it is I would miss you

more.”

“‘Sarah, Plain and Tall’ is about change,” Lauderdale said. “Sarah

has lived her entire life in Maine, but decides to move to Kansas, a

place that is unfamiliar and very different than her life by the sea.

“As far as I know, every child across the nation reads the book as

part of their core curriculum reading list,” he added. “The

television version of the book and its sequel, ‘Skylark,’ were

co-written by the author Patricia MacLachlan, and are excellent

adaptations of this lovely and poignant story.”

Playing the title role in the Laguna production will be Carrie

Pohlhammer. Jonathan Motil is cast as Jacob Witting, the farmer,

while the children will be played by Shea Gomez and Nicolas Leighton.

Justine Kay will enact Gomez’s character as an adult, reflecting

on the story. Others in the Laguna cast are four Nordstrom youngsters

-- Matthew, Maggie, Violet and Rose -- along with William and Meg

Wheaton, Daniel Jensen, Stephanie Schultz, Marissa Lowry and Jodi

Naglie.

“It is interesting that I would be directing a story about change

as I plan a major change in my life,” Lauderdale commented, calling

his tenure at the playhouse “a rare and wonderful experience.”

Apart from the normal two-weekend engagement, “Sarah, Plain and

Tall” will be offered in two school-day matinees next Thursday and

Friday, both at 10 a.m.

Regular performances are scheduled for Fridays at 7:30 p.m.,

Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 and Sundays at 1 and 5 p.m. Call the theater

at (949) 497-2787 for more information.